>> Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Blaster Master 2 sucks. If you ever heard anyone saying anything good about this game, they were either a shill or they made the game themselves. This game takes everything that was good about the 8-bit original and poops on it.

To provide a comparison, I've played and beaten the first game at least four times - and the most recent time I played it, I found myself thinking, "God, but I love this game!" Part two has me thinking, "why am I still playing this?!"

The first had intricate level design, well thought-out enemies, USEFUL powerups, music so good you could play on your stereo (yeah, I grew up in the 80's) repeatedly, and most of all you wanted to keep going just to get past the next boss, just to get the next powerup, just a little bit more.

The second has straightforward levels from which there is NO deviation. You find the locked door, continue on, exit the car and kill a boss to get the key - sorry, powerup - return to the door, and keep going. The powerups pretty much only serve as keys, seriously. The only "useful" powerup is the very first one, which really only takes your rate of fire from "annoying" to "regular".

The controls are pure agony. While driving the car, you find yourself BOUNCING off of the walls in an uncontrollable manner, and while walking you can jump like 70 feet in the air - but if you land slightly further down, say on a slight hill, from where you started, you take damage.

The music is nothing but an INSULT. Whiny, extremely repetitive crap that you wouldn't have heard on an 8-bit game. Well, you would have, but it would have been just as forgettable.

Why am I putting up with it? Ugh, I don't know - I've played pretty much every Blaster Master game out there (I think I didn't try one of the Gameboy games), but seriously, the only good one is the first one. Sunsoft, why did you let this slip from your control?